Monday, January 16, 2012

1995.txt

The Steering Committee (SC) viewed favourably the proposal to synthesise with high chronological accuracy a range of paleo-proxies to infer spatially resolved reconstructions of the climate for use with climate models. The SC would like to see the time-scale of the paleo-proxies extended beyond 1000 years and the study to focus more directly on specific rapid climate change events in the last 2000 years. More detail is also required about the geographical distribution and the nature/extent of existing and new data to be collected within this project. The SC welcomed the fact that the link with MOC/THC would be assessed rather than assumed, but there was concern that the study relies excessively on present climate models providing realistic representations of the Atlantic climate variability. It is felt also that the proposers need to explain how the link between MOC and climate can be ascertained with a reasonable level of confidence. The SC suggested that the proposal may benefit from establishing links with the proposal by R. Battarbee, which makes use of the same HadCM3 runs for use with paleo proxies (note that a full list of successful outline bids will be put on the Rapid web page).

The Rapid Steering Committee wanted proposers to be aware of the following general points when preparing full proposals (note that not all the points below may apply to your specific proposal). Where feasible, the committee wishes to encourage workers on palaeo samples to generate records which focus on some or all of the main rapid changes in the last 15,000 years (e.g. Younger Dryas, 8.2ka event) and on recent Holocene climatic variability, if possible covering the past 2000 years (rather than just the last 1000 years). This will help the programme build a coherent picture of past changes from land and sea, rather than just generating a series of possibly disjoint records. If your project requires C-14 AMS dating, it would be helpful in planning resources if you could state the number of samples that you will require to be dated (but do not cost this), in what time frame and where you expect the dating to be carried out. If you require shiptime and marine equipment for your project, please submit a Shiptime and Marine Equipment (S&ME) form with your full proposal. This will help in planning shiptime and marine equipment resources for Rapid. The form will be placed on the NERC Marine Planning web page shortly (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/marineplan/). If you have any difficulty obtaining the form from the web, please contact me. Finally, please note that a full list of all the successful outline bids will appear shortly on the Rapid web page (http://rapid.nerc.ac.uk/). You may wish to take into account work by other proposers in preparing your full bid. Please take this feedback into account when preparing your full proposal. If you wish to discuss any of the above points further please feel free to contact me.